That is why I believe that talk of heaven (reward) and hell (punishment) is anti-spiritual. It reduces God to an object, whose use is our own advancement. If my wife told me that she loved me because I am wealthy, I would not feel loved. I would merely be a tool (object) whose purpose is similar to my car’s (to faciltate the satisfaction of wants and desires).
I think talk of heaven and hell is a misunderstanding of the Bible’s message. It reduces scripture to the level of Skinnerian psychology. Christ was not a Skinnerian!
Google, “B.F. Skinner.”
My friend, I think you are misunderstanding the Bible and you may have some serious misunderstandings about Catholicism. Here’s 1 John 4:18 after it talks about how God is love:
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. "
Doing right ONLY because we’re afraid of Hell is spiritual immaturity and an indication that we’re not that close to God. Doing right ONLY because of our reward in heaven is selfish and prideful. Neither one of these ideas is what The Church teaches. In fact, quite the contrary. We want to go to heaven because we love God so much, we want nothing more than to spend eternity in his company! And we want to serve God on Earth because we trust in his will over our own. Heaven and Hell are very real, despite our personal preference as to their existence.
Now back to the topic! Without debating gay “marriage,” you can see how redefining marriage opens it up to any assortment of relationships, some seen as less valid than others. If marriage is everything, then marriage is nothing.
While the show in the OP seems silly now, years from now that will be a real possibility. Why don’t you think a human should legally marry a robot? If you don’t like robot marriage, don’t get robot married, but don’t take away someone’s right to love what they want! After all, robot marriages don’t hurt anyone. Your preconceived notions as to what marriage is, is the problem, and your arbitrary definitions are imposing on someone else’s freedom.
You can’t say the love I feel for my toaster is
less than the love you feel for your human wife!! Okay, now I’m being absurd, but you get the idea.
I wouldn’t be too firm on that consciousness standard, either. Several years ago, the final in my Cognitive Neuroscience class had to do with artificial intelligence, and the possibility of creating consciousness in computers, given the similarities in processing between brains and computers and the increasing sophistication and complexity of technology… etc. etc. I won’t bore you with the details, but in the future, you will have a case made for AI consciousness and difficulty disputing it since we can never experience or qualitatively analyze another’s consciousness.
That darn Rod Serling. " Let your imagination run wild he says, it’ll be great TV"!
